Journalist, lecturer and researcher

It’s not just commercial media giants, the BBC cannabilise too

In June I published a blog about a couple of my stories being picked up by other media, in particular commercial newspapers, without any acknowledgement of my original articles.

This is not uncommon, and I learnt from the experience, which I expressed in this post.

Friends and family have expressed outrage that I have not seen a penny from this cannabilisation but as a hardened hack I know this is all par for the course.

And it turns out that it is not just large commercial organisations that do this. All of the media act like sheep, copying one another’s stories and interviewing the same sources. The BBC are just as likely to do this as The Times, The Sun or the Mail Online.

This week BBC consumer programme You and Yours interviewed Professor David Canter (he’s my dad, not my husband) about losing £18,000 to scammers, six weeks after my story for This Is Money. The story had also been followed up by The Times and cyber business news website Glock Takes Stock.

I think I should be flattered that the BBC thought this was a story worth pursuing and contacted my dad directly to be interviewed, but I do wonder if I had pitched it to them directly whether they would have paid for the story.

So while I mull that over, I am going to be generous and share their interview (it’s in the section marked Fraud Victim) here.